


in which there are cupcakes (and Joss gets some)

by ofsevenseas



Series: the minor fall and the major lift [3]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Baking, Crack, Domestic, Fluff, Gen, John is secretly a baking artisan okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-08 00:36:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofsevenseas/pseuds/ofsevenseas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of Joss Carter, a violent amoral unicorn of justice, and how she came to have three different whisks and a top-of-the-line KitchenAid.</p><p>AKA shameless, self-indulgent fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in which there are cupcakes (and Joss gets some)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my beta C, who was having a terrible day that threatened to descend into a sneaky hate spiral - I hope you're feeling better!

Joss heaves a sigh of relief when she reaches her front door and nothing explodes. It’s been that kind of week. At least, she thinks to herself, whatever Finch and Reese are up to, they haven’t asked her to break the law for them in ever-increasingly creative ways. Lucas puts a paw on her shoe when she’s about to open the door, and Joss leaves the key hanging in the lock, because he’s never steered her wrong.

He stands up on his powerful hind legs, long striped nose twitching. “Do you smell anything... different?” He asks Joss.

This is when the front door bursts open from the inside, bringing with it a cloud of cocoa powder and John’s Lily, who appears to be wearing most of the contents of Joss’s kitchen cupboards. “Door’s unlocked!” She announces, presumably to whoever is housebreaking with her today. (Joss has learned not to assume John’s presence; it’s just as likely that Harold has been chivvied out of the library with some harebrained scheme or the sadly delusional hope that he can mitigate the damage.)

Lucas sneezes. He’s looking between Joss and Lily, especially one flour-covered tip of Lily’s ear, and Joss catches the tail-end of his intentions just in time to hiss, “Oh no you don’t. You’re staying here and taking whatever craziness this is with me.”

Lily laughs, tongue hanging out and absolutely unrepentant. “Besides,” Lily says, “You can’t run far without Joss anyway.”

His badger-thick shoulders slump in defeat, and Lucas mutters, “It was worth a try.”

Joss decides that whatever has happened (or still happening) isn’t as bad as putting on a show for the neighbours, and shoos everyone back inside so she can close the door. The interior of the house smells lovely, rich heady whiffs of chocolate, vanilla, and a dash of alcohol floating somewhere in there too.

She hangs up her jacket and toes off her shoes, takes her time putting her gun away in the safe. Lily is dancing around her, almost bursting with glee. Lucas tries to dart past her, but she manages to maneuver between Joss and the door, and playfully knocks Lucas on his back. 

Joss’s daemon hisses, and claws at Lily, but she’s off through the door again, probably using her elite military training to escape.

Joss feels a slight tug when Lucas gets as far as the kitchen doorway, and stands up with a sigh, in order to follow them. There’s a mix of sounds reaching down the hallway, Lily’s low woofs and Lucas’s angry barking, and their claws skittering on the floor - Joss spares a prayer for her hardwood flooring - and generic kitchen noises that Joss has always associated with cooking shows and not her own kitchen.

“Hey,” John says mildly in protest, when Lucas almost clips him going after Lily, “Watch yourselves.”

He looks up at Joss, utterly relaxed and shameless about breaking into _an NYPD officer’s home_. Joss puts her hands on her hips, readying the lecture that is always brewing when he's around, about not breaking the law. She opens her mouth exactly when Lily barrels between her legs, squealing and newly covered in leaves - basil leaves from Joss’s window garden. Joss’s sense of humour wins out.

“So what’s all this then?” She asks. Maybe a number’s come up at some ridiculously overpriced bistro.

“You’re a little early, actually, but can you give me a hand with this?” John says, holding out a syringe to Joss. She pins John with her best ‘come to Jesus’ glare, willing him to tell her what illegal substance he’s injecting into innocent confections. The tragedy is that they look so appetizing, and even while she’s trying to hold John’s surprisingly bland gaze, Joss is plotting out ways to squirrel some of the cupcakes away for dessert. John has two dozen cooling on the kitchen counter, surely he wouldn’t notice four of them disappearing.

“What?” John asks, after a long pause. “Don’t tell me you never learned how to inject pudding into cupcakes? What do they teach you on the police force these days, Carter?”

“Here,” he nudges a bowl of butter-yellow pudding towards her. Joss dips a finger in the mix, suspicious, and holds it out to Lily.

Lily laughs, still behind her, and pads over to lick happily at her fingertip. She still has an errant leaf between both ears, sticking up rakishly on her forehead, and doesn't look at all like she'd been trained to rip men's throats out with her teeth. Sometimes Joss forgets just what John and Lily have been taught to do, and feels grateful that they choose differently, every day. When Joss’s finger is absolutely clean, Lily stands up high, perching front paws on the counter pleadingly, and looks at John in mute appeal. Joss snickers. She’s seen that same look on Bear, and John caves every. Single. Time.

“That wasn’t an answer, John.” She insists. “Why are you in here, destroying my kitchen?”

He’s wearing a polo shirt and no jacket, a far cry from his usual clothes on the job, and there’s no tension holding his shoulders together with military precision. Joss doesn’t really think there is a number on his mind, but she also doesn’t want to encourage John in his complete disregard for boundaries.

John breaks eye contact and looks around the kitchen, and turns back to blink at her virtuously. “I had some spare time, thought I’d drop around and make you something.”

At this, both Joss and Lucas stare at John and narrow their eyes in unison. Lily drops to all fours and looks vaguely guilty. “We heard you were having a bad week?” She tries, and then clearly gives it up for a bad job, and flops to the floor with both front paws over her muzzle.

“I have it on reasonably good authority that you enjoy chocolate cupcakes, Carter. What’s wrong?” Joss isn’t sure - and then checks her phone. She stares at the power bar in increasing betrayal.

“How did Finch find a way to tap into my phone without draining the battery?” She demands.

John gives an eloquent shrug, and continues creaming together butter and powdered sugar in the massive KitchenAid he’s set up, pausing every once in a while to add in a slug of Kahlua.

“So what you’re saying,” Lucas interjects from where he’s perched by the windowsill, “is that you made 24 chocolate cupcakes for us because we were having a bad day?”

John smiles, not very convincingly, as though his muscles know the theory but not the practice, and it hits Joss that he’s nervous, that under the bluff exterior and bravado, she’s somehow hurt him. She looks around for the syringe, and uncaps it. It still looks sterile and weirdly medical in her hands, but she’ll work with what she’s got.

“So what I do is pipe these into the cupcake centers, right?” Joss asks, feeling deep in her heart that she’s about to violate some confectionary, and somewhat uneasy for it.

“Yeah, just until you see a dime-sized pool on the surface.” John reaches over and demonstrates, hands moving with practiced efficiency.

“Huh.” She gets to working, the mechanical motions soothing some inner snarl of frustration that had been growing since morning. Halfway through the second tray, Joss’s brain catches up with her, and she has to put the syringe down again. “Reasonable authority?”

“What?” John says, startled, looking up from where he’s piping the most beautiful frosting swirls Joss has ever seen.

“That- That was _you_?!!” Joss all but screams, “Oh my god, John. _What is wrong with you_?” He jumps, and trails soft chocolate-colored buttercream across half his arm. “What kind of person just leaves handmade cupcakes for the police officer _pursuing_ them??”

John looks a bit nonplussed. “The kind that wants to wish her a happy birthday?” He suggests tentatively. Joss takes a deep breath, secretly glad that Taylor isn’t here to see his mother behaving like - like a very disturbed woman. A very disturbed, very stalked woman.

“John,” she begins, because apparently the army and the CIA both failed miserably at teaching him how to even mimic normal human interaction. “I thought Szymanski brought it for me, but when I asked around, nobody knew anything. I spent the rest of the day trying to talk myself out of going to the E.R. to get my stomach pumped, you crazy person!”

“Oh,” he looks vaguely apologetic, “But you’re fine now.”

“Yes,” she hisses, “ _but I didn’t know that_.”

Lucas uncurls from where he’s getting the best of the fading sun, and reaches Joss in two bounds. “Take it easy, Joss. He meant well.”

John’s still looking at her in the distantly inquiring way he has, and Lily says, voice muffled from her paws, “We're here because Harold forbade him from any ‘strenuous activity’”, ever so long-suffering, “He won’t admit that Shaw hit his ribs.”

“Oh my god,” Joss says for the second time in a row, simultaneously agitated and on autopilot, “What are - go sit on the couch, John. I’ll finish up in here.”

He looks down at the trays, and back up, incredulous. “I mean it,” Joss repeats, infusing her voice with the same authority she had reserved for Taylor’s worst preschool tantrums. John nods at her, and then makes his way - laboriously, Joss can see now. The slight hitch in his gait causes a pinch of guilt as John passes her in the doorway. Lily follows him, hangdog, careful of Joss and Lucas, not even attempting to lick the icing off John’s arm.

Lucas snuffles, just the once, with purpose, and Joss gives up the rest of her night for good. “You better not leave me here,” she calls over her shoulder, just as John reaches for his coat. He looks back at her, surprised and showing it. Joss grins, baring just a little too much teeth. “What, you think I’m going to finish all this by myself? Not a chance.”

John smiles back, natural and boyish, and reaches up to tap at his ear. It’s just as well, Joss thinks, at least Finch will bring something that belongs to an actual food group. 

When Fusco finds out, he spends an entire week sulking about their ‘tea party’, and doesn’t stop complaining until John makes an elaborate triple layer cake for his son’s birthday.

**Author's Note:**

> In case there's any confusion, John's daemon is a grey wolf, and Carter's daemon is a European badger.
> 
> Recipes!
> 
> Chocolate Coffee Cupcakes with Bailey’s Pudding Filling and Kahlua Frosting (http://thepescetarianandthepig.com/2012/02/02/chocolate-coffee-cupcakes-with-baileys-pudding-filling-and-kahlua-frosting/)
> 
> Chocolate and Hazelnut Cake with Espresso Ganache (http://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/chocolate-and-hazelnut-cake-with-espresso-ganache.htm)


End file.
